https://phys.org/news/2018-10-biologists-source-boosting-tumor-cell.html

UC San Diego Project Scientist Manqing Li, Professor Michael David and their colleagues describe on October 29 in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology how a human gene known as Schlafen 11 controls the sensitivity of tumor cells to DDAs. As such, their research may pave the way to new strategies to overcome chemotherapeutic drug resistance.

In 1998, David Schwarz, working in UC San Diego Biological Sciences Professor Stephen Hedrick's lab, discovered the first Schlafen gene in mice. He named it for the German word for sleep because the gene's protein product can cause cells to stop dividing. In 2012 David and Li examined Schlafen 11, a human genetic counterpart of the original discovery, and uncovered its role in HIV replication. They found that the human Schlafen 11 gene encodes a protein that hinders the replication of HIV in infected human cells by blocking the synthesis of viral proteins without suppressing the host cell's overall ability to synthesize proteins.